"Our engine is definitely portable, it could be operated on many platforms, but that's where our market is," EA Maxis lead producer Kip Katsarelis tells GamesIndustry International speaking about PC gaming. "We're still seeing the PC market is not dead, it's very much alive. Blizzard's shown quite a bit of success with their recent Diablo launch, The Sims is highly successful, so there's a market there, we've got an audience there that wants games on that platform, and we are still a PC house and will continue to be so."

Jerykk wrote on Aug 30, 2012, 05:06:Unfortunately, D3's 6+ million sales don't really suggest that consumers are against always-online DRM. Rather, it suggests that they don't care about DRM at all provided that your game has sufficient hype and marketing.

I wouldn't say that, if anything it just shows how established Diablo is and how much it's fans are willing to go through to get it. It's clear noone likes being forced to be online for single player games, some might not care but noone goes "oh that's a great feature for a single player game, I love potential disconnects, being unable to play, lag, hackers, possibility of the game becoming unplayable in future etc". They put up with it because they have to

Also all the hype and marketing in the world will not make a game sell like that, again this is Diablo, something that's had a massive fan base for over a decade with them all waiting over a decade just between Diablo 2 and 3, just like people are waiting for Half Life 3 except Diablo goes back even further.

What I would instead say what that suggests is that most fans of established games are willing to put up with more to play those games and publishers know this and make them jump through more hoops and tie things to those games, of which DRM is not the only downside.

The success of Diablo 3 and all it's nonsense people put up with is only possible with a rare few game franchises and when that is the case people already want the game so much marketing has almost nothing to do with it, it's more of a case of "if you build it they will come".

Unfortunately, D3's 6+ million sales don't really suggest that consumers are against always-online DRM. Rather, it suggests that they don't care about DRM at all provided that your game has sufficient hype and marketing.

People have estimated the PC version has outsold both consoles combined.

That's fairly unlikely but I wouldn't be surprised if it at least outsold the PS3 version. I do wonder why Bethesda hasn't released any platform-specific sales figures yet. Maybe their DLC exclusivity contract with MS prohibits them from announcing sales figures if the Xbox version isn't the top-seller. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if such a clause existed. That's how MS rolls.

Prez wrote on Aug 29, 2012, 23:33:For me it's a little disheartening that they invoke Diablo 3 as an example, which kind of implies that they would consider releasing DRM-laden online only games as the "future".

Considering their plans for SimCity, it's not exactly a surprise they'd have no issues with requiring a connection to play the game. EA has been pushing hard to shoehorn "social" aspects of gaming into everything they can.

Although emulating the sales for Diablo 3 probably wouldn't make them upset either.